Monday, September 15, 2008

My Lyrica has been increased to 150mg BID. Between the increase in it and the terbinafine (generic Lamisil pill), I'm feeling surprisingly pretty good! It's a little scary. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, to flog a dead cliché. I've been off the fungicide for about a month now and my feet are looking as normal as my feet ever look, I still have the cracks along the ball of my feet, but they're not as deep and don't hurt. Thankfully, my blood-work came back normal for the liver profiles, too. 2 months on it and it cleared up (as far as I can tell for now) the Fungal Infection of Doom. It seems that I'm going to have to do this once a year. My feet are simply the perfect home for some sort of fungus that's common in the air, but is uncommon for the average person to actually catch. Because of the PPK, apparently my feet are a theme park for it. Killing the fungus from the inside out seems to help stamp out some sort of (mild/moderate) systemic allergy, and I start feeling physically better. I do find the medicine to be a little scary because of it's potential side effects. I've spent the past month, after getting back from Pennsic, unable to taste 'sweet'. Soda tasted horrendous, a lot of packaged foods also tasted terrible. 'Sweet' is finally coming back after a month or so.

I spent a wonderful day today hanging out with KlrWombat. I got to go to Colyer Lake (fall is fast approaching, but the wind and the trees were just amazingly beautiful), and the see his house and garden. Homegrown pears, red raspberries, dill, tomatoes, concord grapes and flowers galore! Aside from the occasional siren off in the far distance, it was such a tranquil delight. I had a super dinner of home made mac and cheese with bacon. YUM! We talked a little about Demented and I was glad to hear that he's doing ok. I wish he was happier and things were going better, but I'm relived that at least things aren't bad.

I continue to spin wool with an improvised top drop spindle I've kludged together with a couple hard drive platters, a large wooden bead to wedge them onto and then slipped that over a dowel with a small hook on the top. The first one I had was with 2 CDs and it was just a bit too light. The HD platters seem to be just about the right weight. When I'm not working on that, I've started doing a mock-up bodice on a duct tape mannequin I was able to make of Alló. I have some more minor modifications to make before I take it off the dummy and actually make paper pattern pieces. I need to start mine too. I'm feeling a good bit better now that I've got some actual fabric stitched up. I can see that it's going to work, and I feel a little better, but as I've mentioned to others, I'm still a bit afraid that somehow it will all end up crap-tastic in the end. I keep ignoring that voice as best I can.

Just a side note for certain droids from Redmond: Vlad has finally turned me 'into one of those Ren-Faire loving elf people'?!?! *look of indignation* I dress a hundred times classier than they do and they couldn't figure out real Old English if they had foot notes. ;-)

ugh. more more more. so much other stuff to type about but I think I'm mostly done at the moment. I'll leave you with a recipe I made earlier this week:

KlrWombat's Hawaiian Spam Futomaki (or 'sushi' for the average American =)

Ingredients:

Nori sheets (seaweed)

sushi rice (1 cup dry for about 6 full size rolls, 2 cups for up to 16 rolls)

water

rice wine vinegar

3 eggs

1 cucumber

2-3 carrots

green onions

1 can regular Spam

≈ 2-3 Tbs soy sauce

≈ 3 Tbs honey

prepare in whatever order works best for you:

RICE

rinse rice until the water runs clear(using a strainer works best)

put it into a pan that has a tight fitting lid

fill it with enough water that when you put your finger in and just touch the top of the rice, the water comes up to your first knuckle, roughly.

put the pan on 'high' until it starts to boil

turn the burner down as low as it will go and put the lid on.

Let it set until all the water is absorbed (about a 1/2 hour)

once done, add ≈ 2-6 Tbs of rice wine vinegar, to taste. start with a little and add a bit at a time

CUCUMBER

use a carrot peeler to clean off the outside of your cucumber

slice it in 1/2 length-wise and then gently use a small spoon to scoop out the seeds

slice it into long thin strands less than 1/2 inch thick. thinner is better

set aside

CARROT

use a carrot peeler to peel the carrots

continue to use the peeler to peel off long strips of carrot

set aside

GREEN ONION

clean off the green onions and then pull them apart.

you want to have long lengths of them that are thin and generally hollow.

thicker/solid pieces are a bit over-powering

set aside

EGG

scramble the eggs together as well as you can

add a little salt and pepper

fry it as one thin omelet-like sheet, flipping it only once the top starts looking congealed and not watery

once done, roll it up and cut into 1/4-1/2 inch wide strips

unroll them and set them aside

blop out the Spam and cut it into 5 slabs ≈2x3 inches large

put it in the frying pan, pouring the soy and honey over it

over a medium heat, flip it back and forth for a while until it becomes glazed and somewhat sticky

be careful not to cook it too hot for fear of burning the glaze

pull the slabs out of the pan and slice it into 1/3 inch thick strips

set aside

Construction:

- Have a small dish of rice wine vinegar set off to the side

- I prefer to use full sheet nori as opposed to 1/2 sheets since you're putting so much into the maki.

- I prefer to loosely wrap the bamboo mat with cling-wrap. The rice doesn't stick and it makes clean-up easier.

set out your nori sheet on the mat

cover 4/5's of the sheet with rice in a thin layer. I use the back of a plastic rice paddle and 'smear' it somewhat, leaving the exposed seaweed on the side farthest away from me

lay a slice of egg, 1 or 2 slices of cucumber, a couple strands of carrot, spam strips and green onion along the edge closest to me (rice edge)

pull the mat edge closest to you to gently roll it over upon itself, rather tightly, compressing it every so often as you roll

lightly wet your fingers with the vinegar and dampen the un-riced edge of the nori so that it will seal against itself

continue making your rolls till you run out of something or get tired of rolling =)

Using a clean (even somewhat wet) very sharp knife, cut them into the expected circular slab shape.